Electric Warrior

1971

20

Appropriately, Marc Bolan began his ill-fated career as a well-kempt model for John Temple suits. His body was grafted onto cardboard placards and hung in department store windows. On Electric Warrior, not much changed. He’s the cut-out embodiment of a shallow, smutty pulp culture reared on Elvis’ hips and Mick’s lips. Except Bolan knows it, and every line is delivered as archly and ironically as possible: “I danced myself right out the womb,” or, in a sort of ultra-Zeppelin aria, “You’re built like a car/ You got a hubcap.” Bolan’s guitar trembles with dark angst and pop perversion, as well as traces of psychedelic folk. Vocally, the most frequent sound is some sort of neon yawn-hum, halfway between an injured coyote and a ’60s girl group.

But more fundamentally, Electric Warrior served as the blueprint for glam and—filtered through the filth of New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols—the genesis of punk’s attitude, if not its sound. Essential to T. Rex’s junkie-vaudeville was producer Tony Visconti (also a key contributor to Bowie’s Young Americans and Berlin Trilogy). Every noise—from the symphony of “Cosmic Dancer” to the grimy warbling of “Lean Woman Blues”—is lobbed out of some dank echo chamber where hobos and supermodels unite for the sake of their zombie heroin. And whether or not you buy into T. Rex’s brand of fashionable sleaze, they are directly responsible for Ziggy Stardust, Mott the Hoople, and—for better or really, really worse—Poison, Whitesnake, and L.A. Guns. –Alex Linhardt

Ege Bamyasi

1972

19

Can’s various accolades have been well documented over the years, especially in light of hundreds of indie, electronic, and post-rock bands only too proud to flaunt their appreciation of the German outfit. If you consider their hallmarks as precise, metronomic funk, lean group improvisation, and a keen sense of how the avant-garde could be integrated into popular music, then logically (or mathematically, as Jaki Liebezeit might have it), 1972’s Ege Bamyasi was their crowning achievement. The beats were tighter, the excursions more abrupt and on point, the songs compacted, and the mood a focused paranoia fit for astronauts and acidheads alike. Damo Suzuki screams, “Hey you! You’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing, you’re losing your vitamin C!” as if fully aware of the dark, radioactive pit surrounding him, yet he is also typically cathartic in the face of overwhelming restraint and efficiency.

Ege Bamyasi proved that Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and the Velvet Underground were not only revolutionary in their own rights, but could inspire music equally as unprecedented and alluring. It showed that there really was a place to go beyond rock while retaining its power and thrust. Years after the fact, the exact details about what went down in Cologne during the album sessions are hazy, but this album’s sharp detail and droning stare reveal everything you need to know. –Dominique Leone

Bitches Brew

1970

18

In February 1969, Miles Davis weighed 135 pounds. He told reporters: “I figure if horses can eat green shit and be strong and run like motherfuckers, why shouldn’t I?” Boxing coach Bobby Allah, who had been training Davis since the mid-’60s, told Newsweek in 1970: “Even at 43 he acts like 25.” The previous December, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Davis had explained: “Playing trumpet is hard work. You have to feel strong... It’s not the note you play, it’s what you do with it. And it takes strength to bend notes and to keep from breaking phrases in fast tempos.”

That Miles Davis had to relinquish meat, chew on wheat germ and bits of fruit, and study boxing in order to train his body to perform the songs on 1970’s Bitches Brew is not a particularly surprising revelation. One of the most revolutionary jazz records of all time, Bitches Brew is also a phenomenal act of physical prowess (see “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” especially), hinged almost exclusively on the thick call-and-response tension established by the frontman and his players, the dark space between Davis’ huge, meandering trumpet huffs, and his ensemble’s collective sputters. Mixing big rock beats with abstract jazz noodles, splicing together bits of improvisation and ominous incantations, Davis used Bitches Brew to lay the creepy foundation for a genre that would later be watered down from cathartic to stupidly harmless—but here, at the birth of fusion, Miles Davis proved that soldering elements of rock to jazz could be a wholly transformative, bone-breaking pursuit. –Amanda Petrusich

Maggot Brain

1971

17

It’s not enough that Funkadelic’s third album contains the greatest opening line of the ’70s: “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y’all have knocked her up.” The album then proceeds to blow the doors of perception right off their hinges with the greatest studio guitar solo ever recorded, courtesy of Eddie Hazel, whose impetus was George Clinton telling him to play “as if your momma just died.” He unleashes 10 minutes of soul-searing six-string napalm, both killing and birthing millions before your ears while Clinton cuts the backing band away.

So, how could that tripping Motor City collective—much less anyone else—follow that up? Funkadelic do it with echoplexed gospel, fried Sly Stone slink, stoned blaxploitation strut, near-heavy metal shredding, proto-dub drum flange, and ticklish other unmentionables. In short, they turn all that heaviness into a mind-altering block party for all the folks. It all comes to a head with another lengthy track, a hallucinatory slab of audio collage that mixes more incendiary Hazel guitar with cuckoo clocks, cowbells, vibraslaps, hash-sticky band jams, airplane departures, crying babies, crowd chants for “More pussy to the power/ More pussy to the people,” and a frenzied rave that cannot be brought to a halt. Maggot Brain proves that Funkadelic’s rock-based sound was digging other worlds way before Parliament’s mothership ever landed. –Andy Beta

Singles Going Steady

1979

16

Many of the more glaring or contentious omissions from this list are from genres typically considered to be “singles-oriented”: among them, disco, funk, soul, pop, reggae... and punk. In Britain, the roughly two years between the November and December 1976 releases of “New Rose” and “Anarchy in the UK” and the dissolution of the Sex Pistols was a fertile, feverish time, fueled by a string of crucial 7'' records from artists who, for the most part, aren’t reflected in this (or most any) favorite albums list. (Stand up for your token bow, the Subway Sect, the Jam, the Stranglers, the Damned, the Only Ones, X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, the Vibrators, the Undertones, Siouxsie, etc.)

So, Singles Going Steady is our lone homage to the glorious, usually chaotic, often homemade punk single. Like most of their best contemporaries, the Buzzcocks articulated the quotidian anxiety and social fears of young Britain, but did so armed with intensely infectious melodies and hooks. Romantics at heart, the band are burned by misplaced affections, led astray by broken promises, and even driven to obsessive self-love. Were the Howard Devoto–era Spiral Scratch EP included, the album could be bettered, but as it stands, Singles Going Steady is a breathless document and one of most fantastic marriages of pure pop sensibilities and aimless ennui. –Scott Plagenhoef

Who’s Next

1971

15

Are the Who the godfathers of synth-pop? They’re remembered for begetting the rock opera, the windmill strum, and the sadly ironic hope-they-die-before-they-grow-mold reunion tour, but Who’s Next makes a case for Pete Townshend & Co. as the ideological forefathers of the 1980s keyboard revolution as well. Certainly, synth-pop as we know it today doesn’t typically come Marshall-stacked with battering-ram barre chords and towering, megalomaniacal drum fills, but Townshend’s fascination with his fancy new ARP led to the first truly popular album predominantly based on the instrument—from the hyper gobble-loop at the start of “Baba O’Riley” through the extended laser-show breakdown of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

For an album that brought the banner instrument of anti-rockists into public consciousness, Who’s Next is paradoxically also the first record on which an arena-rock band sounds downright Wembley Stadium–large. Producer Glyn Johns removed the thin sound of the Who’s early days, and the result was Roger Daltrey’s voice finally filling out the fringe-jacket, Keith Moon clattering away with greater clarity than ever, and John Entwistle contributing the only listenable song of his writing career. The pretentious arrangements and sloganeering of Who’s Next may have solidified the band as one of the decade’s most imposing dinosaurs but by retaining that mod versus rocker edge underneath the pomp and mysticism, the Who were the one thunder lizard set up to survive the oncoming punk asteroid. –Rob Mitchum

Loaded

1971

14

Though Lou Reed might be more widely remembered for some of the most provocative and contentious experimental rock of the 20th century, his influence stretches equally far within the rock’n’roll mainstream. A spot-on portent of Reed’s vibrant solo career, Loaded witnesses the Velvet Underground emerging from the druggy maw of their late-’60s work to pen some of the best vanilla rock anthems of the era, with the typically reticent Doug Yule assuming a more conspicuous role. The album is staggering not for its consistency, diversity, or technical proficiency—something the band came to stylize—but for the ardor and joie de vivre with which it explores the capacious boundaries of its form.

Sadly, Loaded often comes recommended with one glaring stipulation: “It’s a good starting point, if you’re looking to get into them.” But the album is too good to be relegated to sub-intellectual standing; from the dripping tongue-in-cheek melancholy of “Who Loves the Sun,” to the sultry narrative swagger of “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll,” to the maudlin-but-oh-so-irresistible “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’,” Loaded proves the Velvets top-shelf geniuses with a vocabulary fit for the hoi polloi. It’s here that they finally chose to break the din of their histrionic, often difficult ’60s triumvirate, striking the hot iron of rock in a transitory period—and what a way to do it. –Sam Ubl

Pink Moon

1972

13

During full lunar eclipses, the Earth’s shadow may cause a reddish light to drop across the moon’s surface, sullying its face with a dull, bloody cast. Most ancient mythologies agree that a pink moon should almost always be understood as an omen of impending strife (if not apocalypse) and taken as a generous signal to pause and prepare for trouble.

Recorded in just two days, Nick Drake’s 1972 swan song was a quick and somber departure from his previous effort, the buoyant, heavily orchestrated Bryter Layter. Unfortunately, Drake’s sudden stylistic shift has made it even easier to twist the spotlight of martyrdom directly onto Pink Moon’s 11 tracks: The songs on Pink Moon are almost always eclipsed by the circumstances of Drake’s (presumed) suicide two years later. Impending mortality—regardless of whether it’s been posthumously applied or not—drips from every sharp strum and breathless whisper, coating the album’s 26 minutes in a wash of disembodied melancholy. The cumulative effect feels both eerily preemptive and genuinely touching; everything about Pink Moon seems to point down, from the descending piano of the title track to Drake’s flat, eerily prophetic promise, “Take a look/ You may see me in the dirt.” Ultimately, Pink Moon’s beauty is as terrible as it is touching—a harsh, gray tribute to the inevitability of big lunar promises. –Amanda Petrusich

Fun House

1970

12

It’s fitting that there’s only one degree of separation between Fun House and “Louie Louie.” That degree is producer Don Gallucci, who played keyboards for the Kingsmen on the slapdash Richard Berry cover that unwittingly became the nexus point for punk’s sloppy abandon more than a decade after its 1962 release. When Gallucci assumed control of the boards in 1970, he immediately realized what John Cale, who produced their debut the year before, hadn’t—that the Stooges’ primal energy and snarling attitude needed a bare-bones casting to be at its most effective.

Gallucci captures the raw intensity of the band’s live show with next to no embellishment—Steve Mackay’s guest sax contributions simply bleed into the album’s molten texture, mingling with Ron Asheton’s chaotic, wah-drenched guitar in a dance of fire-breathing monsters. Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander pummel harder than Daley’s riot squads in ’68, and there, simultaneously towering over and drowning within the vortex, is Iggy, ranting in the tortured shouts of a man who knows he might not be around much longer if he keeps living this way. If you set your TV eye on the album art, you’re met with the contours of Pop’s skin-and-bones physique as he struts through what might be Hell, microphone held high overhead—the cover promises Iggy in the maelstrom, and that’s exactly what Fun House delivers. –Joe Tangari

Exile on Main St.

1972

11

Released in the 1970s amidst post-Beatles uncertainty, post-Altamont rage, and the beginning stages of bloated arena rock, Exile on Main St. probably saved the soul of rock’n’roll. With this seemingly accidental masterpiece, the gritty country blues the Stones tested on earlier records is perfected but not polished, coherent but far from sober, aspiring but hardly blessed. In its broad thematic scope and timeless instrumental arrangements, the album doesn’t so much break new ground as utterly embody a classic rock ideal: It’s the great American album, shockingly consummated by ballsy British louts.

Stylistically speaking, Main St. runs the gamut from Gram Parsons’ cosmic honky-tonk to Muddy Waters’ lush, booze-drenched symphonies. They’d always been some of the greatest interpreters of American music; Exile on Main St. is the paean to their influences. There’s a beatific, run-down acceptance in the gospel blues of “Let It Loose,” the barroom sing-along “Sweet Virginia,” and the worksong-like “Sweet Black Angel,” but these are mere mile markers on a sprawling scenic route through consistently powerful songwriting and apt production. Good ol’ boy anthems like “Rocks Off” and “Loving Cup” never made it to radio, yet stand as some of the Rolling Stones’ most enduring and soulful work. Treading confidently into alt-country’s fresh terrain and the dense and muddled mist of modern rock, Exile stands proudly as the most influential album by one of rock’n’roll’s most effortlessly innovative bands. –Jonathan Zwickel